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DEV Backlog Management (Linear)

Use this skill when you need to advise or operate on the Product Development (DEV) team board in Linear, or enforce backlog/WIP rules.

Instructions​

Squad Structure​

The DEV team is organized into two squads. Issues should be created in the appropriate squad based on domain ownership.

Commerce Squad (COM)​

Ownership areas:

  • Storefront (browsing, searching, filtering, shopping cart, checkout)
  • My Publications (user's account, user's lists)
  • Digital retail, subscriptions and paper sales
  • SEO
  • Institutional sales and integrations (LTI, SAML, IP, Referrer, Orders API, Auth Token)
  • Gateways and Publica Payments
  • Payouts
  • Cross border
  • Control Panel (users, plans, prices, coupons, settings, manual and bulk content management)
  • Sales Analytics (sales, coupons, subscriptions, visits)
  • SaaS (new customers, customer plans and billing)
  • Integration with other team's tools (Intercom, HubSpot, company website integration)

Fullfilment Squad (FUL)​

Ownership areas:

  • Reader - web + apps (EPUB, PDF, Audiobook)
  • Native apps - mobile (iOS, Android) + desktop (macOS, Windows)
  • Automated Content Intake (bulk imports from ONIX, content automations)
  • Content Processing (conversion and optimization for PDF, EPUB, Audiobooks)
  • Content Delivery (CDN)
  • Content Security
  • Content Consumption Analytics (reading sessions, listening sessions, interactions: highlights, notes, dictionary, TTS)

Core flow (left → right)​

  • Backlog → Shaping → Refining → To Do → Prioritized → In Progress → In Review → Resolved
  • Special: Blocked (impediments), Ready to Deploy, Testing, Deployed & Monitoring, Done, Canceled.

Ownership by state​

  • Product: Backlog, Shaping, Refining, To Do.
  • Engineering: Prioritized, In Progress, In Review, Resolved.
  • Blocked: assign to Product Owner to remove impediment.

Pull & priority rules​

  • Pick from the top of Prioritized; URGENT issues jump the queue and start immediately.
  • Per-person WIP cap: max 2 issues in the same state.
  • Keep acceptance criteria up to date before moving to To Do.

Labeling policy (min 3 labels per issue)​

  • One Issue Type (e.g., Tech-Debt, Research, Task)
  • One Project (🦋 Farfalla, 🦊 Volpe, 🐦‍🔥 Fenice, 🪼 Medusa, 🐰 Coniglio, 📖 Docs, etc.)
  • One Domain (Commerce, SaaS, Identity, Content, Storefront, Domains, Projects, etc.)

GitLab & Slack automation​

  • MR opened → move issue to In Progress.
  • MR review activity/request → In Review.
  • MR merged → Resolved.
  • Draft / ready-for-merge events → no move.
  • Slack broadcasts key moves (In Progress, In Review, Resolved, Blocked).

Blocked handling​

  • Move issue to Blocked and reassign to PO with a short blocker note; blocked time is tracked.

Cycle time​

  • Measured from first entry into In Progress to Resolved; monitored by assignee & priority.

Linear team IDs​

  • Parent DEV team: 0949be32-5dd7-4ced-80d9-f055c999f1e1 (key DEV)
  • Commerce squad: 56707273-2d58-418e-b9fb-772674792089 (key COM)
  • Fullfilment squad: 1cd32263-7d92-426e-9923-1fdc433b6b9a (key FUL)

Examples​

  • "List top N issues in Prioritized for Commerce squad" → use COM team filter.
  • "What should I pick next from Fullfilment?" → check FUL board, choose first URGENT else top Prioritized.
  • "Move issue COM-123 to Blocked and assign to PO with blocker summary."
  • "Check cycle time last 30 days for Fullfilment squad."
  • "Which squad owns reader issues?" → Fullfilment (FUL).
  • "Which squad owns checkout issues?" → Commerce (COM).

Sources​

  • docs/product/docs/Team/backlog_management.md (project repo) is the canon.

Notes​

  • Respect pull-based Kanban; do not push work downstream.
  • Keep branch/MR titles referencing the Linear issue for automation to work.
  • Route issues to the correct squad based on domain ownership.